They include earlier integrations with Lakeside Software and PrinterLogic, which have been available as custom orders, but which are now part of the basic OS.
Simon Clephan, IGEL’s Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances
Thin client and endpoint management software maker IGEL has announced the new 10.05.100 version of their IGEL OS. The big news in this release is additional integrations, which include functionality within the standard OS that has been available earlier, but only through special order.
“This is our largest software upgrade ever,” said Simon Clephan, IGEL’s Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances. “It’s so large that we’ve been trying to get this out since August – and are finally releasing it now. It’s a very meaningful release for both us and our customers.”
Two major factors drive IGEL’s strategy here, issues surrounding Windows 10 on the endpoint, and the continued rise of the important of unified communications to the VDI business.
“Our overall strategy is to save customers money in three areas: capital investment; OPEX; and with a more secure environment,” Clephan said. “The major driving factor in the market is the uncertainty of Windows 10 on the endpoint. The notion of biannual updates from Microsoft which may not work properly is shaking up the market. Our philosophy is that Windows belongs in the data centre. We are a thin, light data centre for the endpoint, and are optimized for it. Windows is optimized for application delivery – not endpoints.”
IGEL’s other big driver is unified communications.
“Vendors talk to us about Skype and Cisco for unified communications – hence our Nuance, Jabra and Plantronics partnerships and the extension of our Sennheiser partnership,” Clephan said. That’s what is driving our business.” IGEL previously supported Sennheiser headsets, and is adding support for select Plantronics headsets. Support for Jabra headsets is slated to be coming soon. This OS also enhances support for Skype for Business.
Support has been added for select Intel NUC mini computers, LG All-in-One computers, Toshiba Tecra C50 Satellite Pro R50 computers, and HP t360 and Dell Wyse 3040 thin clients. IGEL has also completed integrations with select Kofax/Wacom signature pads, and select Crossmatch fingerprint readers. Updated software support also includes Citrix Receiver 13.9.1 and 13.10.0 featuring HDX Realtime Media Engine 2.6.0; VMware Horizon 4.8.0; and Cisco JVDI, 32-bit client within the Citrix receiver. Additional updates include support for Parallels 16.5, ThinLinc 4.9.0 and FabulaTech 5.2.29.
This version of the IGEL OS version also fully incorporates the IGEL thin client assessment tool, powered by Lakeside Software SysTrack Workspace Analytics. It enhances visibility into IGEL OSTM-powered endpoints with a robust set of workspace analytics that gathers endpoint metrics from the IGEL endpoints, like CPU performance, system memory, disk usage, peripheral devices, network connectivity and latency.
“We made this public in February, and since then we have been shipping it as a custom partition,” Clephan said. “Now it has been added onto the OS through the joy of Linux, which lets you add things on as modules. Now it’s a standard feature which everyone gets. Before, you had to make a custom order for the Lakeside version.”
Similarly, an integration of PrinterLogic’s enterprise print management software with the IGEL OS has now been fully incorporated. PrinterLogic’s centrally managed direct IP printing solution can now be configured on any IGEL OS-powered endpoint, to let print jobs be sent directly from the endpoint device to the printer. Like the Lakeside analytics tool, this was also announced earlier in the year, but is now embedded in the OS rather than available as a custom feature.
“We have also upgraded our graphics-intensive multimedia capabilities,” Clephan said. “We did a bunch of tuning on our UD 3 [workhorse] and UD7 [high end] products to incorporate some high-end AMD capabilities so we can deliver HDX in a more powerful fashion. We have been getting better at delivering features that AMD delivers. We are also partnered with NVIDIA. We don’t incorporate their chips but many customers have NVIDIA in the data centre, so they optimize their graphics to power virtual desktops. That’s helping us out. They have been tuning what they do for VDI. They will be a Platinum sponsor of our Disrupt events in January and February, and we will be doing some interesting announcements with them.”
Security, always an IGEL point of emphasis, has been upgraded in this release.
“This will be a driver for 2019,” Clephan said. “The addition of HTML5 AppArmor enhances browser security. We are not defining it as secure lockdown, but we are moving in that direction.”
IGEL OS 10.05.100 is available now.
